So why then are so many organizations so inconsistent right from the start?

New employee onboarding is the name most commonly given to the process of welcoming a new hire and getting them up to speed on their role and the company.

New employee onboarding is the first opportunity an organization has to build foundational knowledge with their new hires — everything from functional questions like how to use internal systems and sign up for benefits packages to matters of greater importance: organizational values, standards of performance, and what defines success. All together, it’s the information every member of your team needs in order to do the best work.

New hires, too, have come to depend on effective onboarding — and feel lost without it. According to a survey of employees who had quit a job within six months of starting:

23 percent felt they hadn’t received clear guidelines to their new responsibilities

21 percent said they wanted “more effective training”

Yet with so much to be gained — or lost — many organizations still don’t make onboarding a priority.

Instead of standardizing an onboarding program that can ensure all that essential information is delivered consistently, companies put their faith in the hiring manager to conduct this essential learning and development task. Sometimes this means new hires get a lengthy, detailed, 90-day onboarding plan. Sometimes, this means new hires get a cup of coffee and a rundown on what their new team works on. And sometimes, this means new hires are simply assigned a task and left to learn the ropes on their own.

It’s a problem that is only exaggerated when organizations expand.

For larger organizations, or those with geographically dispersed offices, storefronts, or sales territories, relying on local managers for new employee onboarding increases the likelihood that your new employee experience will be different for every new hire — and that over time, every physical location will develop it’s own individual workplace culture, and not necessarily consistent with the values and measures practiced in the corporate headquarters.

So what’s the secret to simple, scalable, consistent new employee onboarding?

Video. With video, your learning and development team can record everything new recruits need to know — and share that information in a standard, consistent fashion. HR teams can even make use of the organization’s central video library to build playlists of videos for new hires to access and play anytime anywhere — so even those new employees coming in to offices across the country or around the world will start with exactly the same foundational information as their peers at HQ.

Best of all, video for new employee onboarding can be easy. Just record the onboarding training already available! Just by recording those sessions you make the information shareable — and in turn, you help the whole onboarding process become more consistent.

Need an example?

Leveraging video training creates a portable, consistent learning experience for every employee — and ensures that team member receives that critical information the same way, regardless of who conducts the training.

Video onboarding doesn’t have to be limited to the basics, either. HR teams can even work directly with hiring managers in front-lines or high-turnover teams to capture the essentials of what new employees need to know — ensuring that every new team member learns everything they should, even if the corporate training team can’t deliver the information in person.

Find out more!
Learn 15 ways to enhance new employee onboarding with video — with a simple guide to creating an onboarding program that works — in our complete guide to new employee onboarding with video, Make Every First Day A Great One.